Media Release
Embargo 3 August 2010 12.00 a.m.
The Sentencing Advisory Council has today released a report that compares offending patterns and sentencing outcomes for men and women in Victoria.
The report shows that women are less likely than men to receive an immediate custodial sentence, and when they are sentenced to prison their terms of imprisonment are shorter than are those for men. This is partly explained by the finding that women commit fewer crimes than men and that the crimes committed by women tend to be less serious than those committed by men. It is also explained by the range of mitigating factors present in the lives of women who come before the courts. Female offenders are more likely to have a history of factors such as mental illness, physical or sexual victimization in childhood or early adulthood, and a history of substance abuse. Women are also more likely than men to have primary caregiver status.
Professor Arie Freiberg, Chair of the Sentencing Advisory Council said, 'We did not find any evidence to suggest that courts treat women more leniently than men when it comes to sentencing. We found a range of reasons that explain differences in sentencing outcomes, to do with different patterns of offending and very different biographies that see women coming before the courts with a whole cluster of factors that can reduce the length of a sentence.'
The paper’s findings on differences in sentencing outcomes are placed in the broader context of the large increase in women’s imprisonment rates compared to men in Victoria over the last 15 years. Since 1995 the female prison population in Victoria has grown from 116, to its highest ever number in June 2009 of 282 women – this represents double the growth seen in the men’s prison population in the same period. However, despite the faster increase in the number of women in prison, the vast majority of prisoners are men, with 4,068 males in Victorian prisons on 30 June 2009.
The report found that there are many more men in prison than women because men tend to commit more serious crimes, more often than women. Men who go to prison also tend to have more serious criminal histories and more prior convictions than women.
'Victoria’s prison population is growing steadily. More people are going to gaol and for longer periods, particularly in the case of women. But the number of women in prison compared to men remains very small and as such the numbers are volatile and subject to greater fluctuations,' said Professor Freiberg.
Gender Differences in Sentencing Outcomes can be downloaded from our website.
